Re: LilyPond, Finale and Sibelius (was Review of Valentin's Opera)

From:

Jonathan Kulp

Subject:

Re: LilyPond, Finale and Sibelius (was Review of Valentin's Opera)

Date:

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:43:10 -0500

User-agent:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (X11/20090318)

Nick Payne wrote:

...
That's a real interesting report!. You note that entering chords in
lilypond is real slow as compared to using MIDI entry.
While that's no surprise, I wonder if there's anything that we can or
should do about it. Typing <> is just real awkward...

Try setting guitar scores. I just did a quick count on the first page of the
BVW1004 Chaconne that I have been playing around with setting for guitar in
Lilypond, and I have 187 left-hand fingering indications, 10 right-hand
fingering indications, and 23 string number indications. A typical note
entry would be something like
<f-1\4-\RH #1 >
If only there was some way to avoid all those <>...
Nick

The way I avoid this on my guitar scores is to put minimal fingerings,
only ones that I really, really care about that are not obvious from the
context. If I'm actually performing the piece later I'll write in more
fingerings with a pencil. :)

My thoughts on this thread: I can enter music much more quickly in
Lilypond than in Finale, in most cases. It helps that I've gotten
comfortable with Vim and learned how to take advantage of some of its
editing features, too. The syntax for entering expressive markings like
slurs, articulations, and dynamics is excellent and much quicker than in
Finale, where you have to switch from one tool to another. Chords are
slower, though, for sure. What takes longest for me is precise
positioning of things like fingerings, because I usually don't like the
default placement and have to use extra-offset to get them exactly where
I want them.

What's nice about Lilypond from my "composer's" point of view is that
it's gotten me back to writing music with pencil and paper instead of
doing it in Finale. I've realized for a while that in some pieces
Finale was making me lazy as a composer (and the same happens with my
students). I was using the copy-and-paste function way too much and not
thinking enough about the content of the music. With Lilypond I'm again
separating composition from typesetting, which is a good thing IMO.
Last semester I bought a book of staff paper for the first time in more
than 15 years!